Australian Dictionary of Biography

Eric Storm, Java, 1924

Eric Storm (1896–2000), accountant, investor, philanthropist, and centenarian, was born on 4 March 1896 at Mosman, Sydney, third of four children of English-born parents William Ridley Storm, accountant, and his wife Beatrice Sayers, née Mayle. His parents had immigrated to Australia for its drier climate, as William suffered from tuberculosis; he died in 1907 aged forty-eight. By contrast, and despite poor health earlier in his life, Eric would live to the age of 103. Educated at Fort Street Boys’ High School, he matriculated in 1912, then trained as an accountant with a Sydney firm. Seeking an even drier climate because of his own lung disorder, he worked as a bookkeeper at Barenya cattle station near Hughenden, Queensland. Soon afterwards he became bookkeeper and storeman for a small trucking business in the district, owned by John and Fred Archer, until the brothers enlisted in 1916 in the Australian Imperial Force for overseas service in World War I.

Rejected for the AIF on medical grounds, in 1917 Storm took an accountancy post with Burns, Philp & Co. Ltd, at Semarang, Java, Dutch East Indies. After only six months, while recuperating from kidney trouble, he accepted an ‘excellent position’ (French 2010, 15) as a commodity broker for Butterworth and Co., at a time when the prices of Java’s commodities—including sugar, tea, coffee, rice, and rubber—skyrocketed. He became a partner in the firm and very wealthy. With financial success came social standing and an extravagant lifestyle: as he later recalled, ‘we played hard and we worked hard … and drank a lot of alcohol’ (French 2010, 15–17).

Retiring in 1930, Storm returned to Sydney and became a private investor and trader. He had made £400,000 in Java and later recalled ‘I had the money to buy good shares very cheaply almost at the bottom of the market’ (Synnott 1999, 57). Weighing seventeen stone (108 kg), he continued his unhealthy lifestyle of drinking, smoking, and eating poorly, until he collapsed from a heart attack in 1934. His doctor warned that he was living on borrowed time, so he quit smoking and began taking an interest in diet, eventually becoming a vegetarian. Leaving Sydney, he was the licensee of the Lake View Hotel, Merimbula, until 1937, then proprietor of the Luxembourg Guesthouse at Bowral. On 19 June 1941 he married Blanche Amelia Taylor, née Jackson, a divorcee, at St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Bowral. His guest house was destroyed by fire two months later and by 1943 the couple was living at Orange. They had no children.

Moving to Sydney after World War II, the Storms lived at Neutral Bay and later Cremorne. A health-minded fellow businessman and philanthropist, Leslie Owen Bailey, invited Eric onto the board of his charity, the Youth Welfare Association of Australia (later the Australian Youth and Health Foundation). In 1960 Bailey and Storm, together with Bailey’s business associate Madge Cockburn, established the Hopewood Health Centre on the Nepean River at Wallacia. Storm was a director of the centre for forty years, and was also a founding member (1960) of the Natural Health Society.

Meanwhile, Storm renewed his friendship with his former Queensland employer, Fred Palmer Archer (1890–1977), who had become wealthy as a plantation owner in New Guinea. After retiring to Rabaul in 1960, Archer transferred his assets to F. P. Archer Holdings Pty Ltd, under Storm’s oversight in Sydney. It was later converted into the F. P. Archer Charitable Trust, and Storm took over full control after Archer died in 1977. The trust made donations to various schools and kindergartens in Papua New Guinea, and to many Australian charities, and by 1999 it was valued at $25 million.

For the rest of his life, Storm continued with his charitable work and share trading. Described as ‘a legend in Sydney business for his astute knowledge of the markets and for his unshakeable integrity,’ he was ‘a modest man without affectation’ (Inder 2000, 46). His personal wealth was reported in 1999 to be $20 million. When he was appointed AM that year for service to the community through the F. P. Archer Charitable Trust, the Channel 7 television news stated that he was ‘still making millions on the stock market and giving it all to charity’ (French 2010, 384).

Remaining in robustly good physical and mental health, Storm travelled overseas every year from 1982 until 1996, the year he celebrated his 100th birthday at the Hopewood Health Centre. At the age of 103, he attributed his longevity to his lifestyle: ‘I believe diet is number one, exercise would be number two, and relaxation and positive thinking number three’ (French 2010, 386). Predeceased by his wife (d. 1978), he died on 24 February 2000 at a private hospital in Chatswood. He was buried in Macquarie Park Cemetery, North Ryde. His life inspired the title of a 2002 book, How a Man Lived in Three Centuries: The Complete Guide to Natural Health.